Monday, December 30, 2013

Well, the
holiday season is over. Three days of celebrating Joshua ben Joseph’s birthday
whatever your religion if any, by partying, singing, praying, eating and drinking,
wishing everyone happiness, and completely forgetting the poor, the homeless, the
lonely, the desperately ill, the starving, the bereaved, especially those who lost
a child in a school shootout, a child who will never celebrate Christmas again,
the world’s refugees from natural and man made disasters,the tortured and those living in fear and dread in the
shadowof the Taliban, Al Qaeda,
Boko Haram, Al Shabaab or any other vicious vipers’ nest of crazed fanatics..

the Coptic Christians in Egypt, the Christians
in Pakistan, the fighting in Syria, or Iraq, Iran, Saudi; countries dominated
by clerics, religious police, law courts only too happy to dish out death
sentences and lashings beyond belief for what in the civilised world would be considered
trivial. Raef Badawi, a Blogger who is one of the establishers of the
"Liberal Saudi Network", which angered Ultra-orthodox clerics of Saudi Arabia
has been sentenced to seven ears in prison and 600 lashes. Think about that for
a moment. Are you actually meant to survive 600 lashes or is that simply a way
of applying a dreadful death sentence without actually passing one? But it
could be worse. It would appear seven years in prison and 600 lashes is not
enough to satisfy the crazy clerics. He could be beheaded soon for a claimed
"apostasy".

There has evidently been a great deal of news in Arabic
about this issue but in English it has not had much attention till now. However
this piece has now been published:
“A Saudi court on Monday referred a rights activist to a higher court for
alleged apostasy, a charge that could lead to the death penalty in the
ultra-conservative kingdom, activists said.”
A judge at a lower court referred Raef Badawi to a higher court, declaring that
he "could not give a verdict in a case of apostasy." Badawi, who was
arrested in June in the Red Sea city of Jeddah
for unknown reasons (?) is a co-founder of the Saudi Liberal Network with
female rights activist Saud al-Shammari and others.” And let us not forget
the treatment of women and girls abused (acid attacks? Beatings? Rape?) at the
hands of their men folk in the lands of the mad mullahs.

Great celebrations
huh? Well…why dwell on all the injustices in the world at such a joyous time?
You have a warm, snug, happy household, you’re surrounded hopefully by people
you love and who love you. There’s a crackling fire in the hearth, cards on the
mantelpiece, music, decorations, a tree with presents stacked around it and
Christmas lights, a table well laden with food and various delicacies seen only
on this special occasion, and plenty to drink. After lunch if you haven’t over-indulged, you
may play boisterous games with merry laughter or, replete, sit back and watch
telly, doze off and think of the imminent sales in which, having possibly
queued all night outside a large department store, for a few short hours, the doors
open and all sense of decorum is consequently thrown to the winds and you can behave
like a snatching snaring snarling hooligan grabbing for things you don’t really
want and certainly don’t need. I’ve never understood why otherwise ostensibly
sane people do it. The answer could be the demon greed. It reminds one of the
behaviour of the Gadarene swine inhabited by demons throwing themselves off the
cliffs. Poor piggies. Joshua could have got rid of the demons with a click of
his mystical fingers instead of which he sent them howling into the bodies of
the pigs causing this mass suicide. Evidently this event didn’t actually take
place on Jewish soil which answers one question but who in those days could own
a herd of 2000 pigs and, more importantly lose them? And was Jesus sued for the
loss of these valuable animals?

Well, 2013
is almost over. Soon it will be Christmas time once more, Church bells will
ring merrily on high, carols will be sung, greetings sent, and God bless us
every one Tiny Tim will say yet again.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Had the
most bizarre dream the other night. I often wonder how the brain in sleep comes
up with these inventions that are pure fantasy, especially when they have
absolutely nothing to do with your every day life. Naturally certain incidents
during the day can be the touch paper as was the case here. Friends lent us two
DVDs of “Startrek” and of course we had to watch them both; that is the others
watched them both but I found, possibly because they were stretched into full
length movies instead of filling a mere half hour usually with a simple
straightforward story, I kept dozing off so obviously missed some of the plot.
I really wasn’t taken in by them at all.* Plots involving time travels are
often suspect. When we went all those year ago in London to the very first
“Star Wars” I was riveted to it, so much so that the very next evening at
supper I suggested we went to see it again, which we did; the only film that
has ever received the two nights in a row treatment. Since then I’ve also sat
through it a few times on DVD. I think “Startrek” was being too clever by half
though the others seemed to enjoy it. It moved at such a rate the dialogue
became almost unintelligible, so fast in fact the sub-titles couldn’t keep up
with it. I disliked the boy playing Kirk but I have a feeling it was not his
fault but the fault of the direction. Having been told to play it big and bold
and brash and possibly egged on he went over the top and became objectionable,
a lout: witness the apple eating scene. This of course is only my reaction and
arguable.

But what
all this is leading up to is the dream. Naturally, as with most if not all
dreams, I don’t remember it exactly and if I hadn’t woken up to go to the loo I
most probably wouldn’t remember as much as I have done which was this: the
original crew of the “Enterprise,” that is from the original series; William
Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, George Takei etcetera were now crewing a double decker
bus! I ask you, from a spacecraft going to where no man had been before, to the
streets of (I presume as it was red double decker) London. Kirk was the driver (that’s logical)
and Spock was the conductor. He had one of those old-fashioned metal ticket
dispensers filled with a roll of paper and a handle to wind out the necessary
ticket. Now this is the truly weird part. It turned out that Spock was Roman
Catholic and his tickets were indulgences so if there were any passengers he
didn’t like they didn’t get a ticket and went straight off to purgatory. Sulu
eventually told him he was being a bit too judgmental so when a pretty girl
boarded the bus and Spock fell for her that was the end of withholding any
passenger’s ticket. So love speaks not only in the language of flowers but in
London Transport bus tickets.

A billion
pixels for a billion stars.The Gaia satellite, launched by the European
Space Agency, is aiming to map the precise positions and distances to Earth of
more than a billion stars. It is
one of the most ambitious space missions ever to be launched and should give
the first realistic picture of how our Milky Way galaxy is constructed.

.

Gaia's remarkable sensitivity will lead also to the
detection of many thousands of previously unseen objects, including new planets
and asteroids. The intention is to put it on path to an observing station some
1.5 million km from the Earth on its nightside - a journey that will take about
a month.

Gaia has been in development for more than 20 years.

It will be engaged in what is termed astrometry - the
science of mapping the locations and movements of celestial objects.

To do this, it carries two telescopes that throw light on to
a huge, one-billion-pixel camera detector connected to a trio of instruments.

Gaia will use this ultra-stable and supersensitive optical
equipment to pinpoint its sample of one billion stars,1% of the Milky Way's
total, with extraordinary confidence; Their physical properties catalogued -
details such as brightness, temperature, and composition. It should even be
possible then to determine their ages.

And for about 150 million of these stars, Gaia will measure
their velocity either towards or away from us.

But the quality of the new survey promises a raft of
discoveries beyond just the stars themselves: new asteroids, failed stars, and its
map of the sky will be a reference frame to guide the investigations of future
telescopes

And because Gaia will track anything that passes across its
camera detector, it is likely also to see a colossal number of objects that
have hitherto gone unrecorded - such as comets, asteroids, planets beyond our
Solar System, cold dead stars, and even tepid stars that never quite fired into
life. Maybe even Heaven!

By the end of the decade, the Gaia archive of processed data
is expected to exceed 1 Petabyte (1 million Gigabytes), equivalent to about
200,000 DVDs of information.

*All I can
say is I had better get into a “Startrek” mood as we have been given

the full DVD set for Christmas and that’ a whole lot of viewing.
A happy Christmas to you all and a bright 2014.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Jesus was a rent boy! What? What? What!!! Now I have heard
everything and, if this is true, it turns the whole world, especially for
Christians and Muslims on its head

“In a stunning discovery that archaeologists hope might shed
light on the little-known years between Jesus Christ’s childhood and his
ministry, the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered what they believe to be
the site where, in the years before he began his itinerant preaching, a
desperate, cash-strapped Christ briefly turned to tricks for money. Excavators
working in the Beit Hanina neighborhood of Jerusalem unveiled fragments of
several earthenware vessels, a public latrine hewn from stone and terra cotta
piping dating to Jesus’ era, along with a curbed Roman road that served as a
main artery of ancient Judea, where the fledgling, hard-up prophet is believed
to have cruised for johns passing by. “It’s an incredible find, and one that
confirms many of our long-held theories about Christ’s so-called lost years,”
said the dig’s head archaeologist, Aviram Oshri, who went on to note that while
Christ’s hooking is not referenced in the New Testament, suggestions that he
resorted to the flesh trade abound in historical records of the period.” (Abounds?
Where? Where?) “This intersection is an exact match for the area described in
ancient texts, where Jesus is said to have flagged down lonely men traveling
from Yafa and offered his services, this was before he had many followers, of
course,” Oshri added. “Some of his earliest followers were clients, actually.”
(Now how on earth would he know that?)

The young Christ, like many Hebrew males adrift, is believed
to have turned to sex work around 19 A.D. helping to cope during a bout of
homelessness. There is noting new under the sun, Though implicitly prohibited
by Jewish law, prostitution was prevalent in ancient Judea, with sex workers
trading their services for cloth, fowl, wine, and small coins, a transaction
that Christ is believed to have executed hundreds of times during a short
period of time in his 20s.

Christians never think of Jesus having sexual needs, I am
not referring to what is written above, but as the man he was meant to be, he
must have had a normal man’s urges.

In the sixties there was a lady by the name of Mary
Whitehouse who had no time for “the Permissive Society” and formed what was
called “The Viewers and Listeners Association” whose complaining members would
endeavor to keep British broadcasting pure. Of course, as always, sex was at the
bottom of it and when a Swedish film came out about Christ’s possible sexuality
she hit the Richter scale at about 6.5. But that was as nothing compared to
“The Romans In Britain” in which there was a certain amount of supposed sodomy
or anal rape on stage which sent the scale up another couple of degrees and for
which she sued The National Theatre, but withdrew her case seemingly happy with
the waves she had made.

Anyway, I decided to write a satire about Mrs. Whitehouse in
which though reference is made to Christ’s sexuality it would never have
occurred to me in a thousand years to go so far as to suggest he was for a
short period of his life a boy on the game.

The play is called “Twilight of Aunt Edna” an obvious pun on
“Twilight of the Gods” and the destruction of Valhalla,
and Edna being a character invented by the playwright Terrance Rattigan, a lady
from the Home Counties who writes letters to the newspapers about plays she
find objectionable. Well I reckon there would have been a hundred letters or
more over “Twilight of Aunt Edna” which is why I suppose that it got very close
to production a number of times and was then chickened out.

So here is an extract – Edna’s son Geoffrey who has a sexual
hang-up over plastic macs, the more colourful the better, is smitten by Edna’s
new secretary, a Pentecostal young lady who arrived wearing one and which he
has stuffed beneath pillows on the couch, and this is the first opportunity he
gets of being alone with her. Father, with a stack of porn and lengths of rope
is tying himself into knots in the garden shed despite “being allergic to
geraniums and turpentine.” And in answer to Hillary’s enquiry re Edna…

GEOFFREY: No, she'll
be ages too. She's at the police station.

HILARY opens her mouth
but nothing comes out.

Malcolm's been a naughty boy.

HILARY: Malcolm?

GEOFFREY: Not that
I'm surprised. That man's so false even his wig has dandruff.

HILARY: Who is
Malcolm?

GEOFFREY: Secretary
of the Holier Than Thou Society. He's gone and got himself sodomised in a sauna
and he's up for it. She's gone to see what can be done to pull his chestnuts
out of the fire. I know what his defense will be, the usual one about having
too much to drink and not knowing what he was doing. Anyway, if they can get up
to all these little pranks, why can't we? It's only a question of not being
found out. Jesus got away with it.

HILARY: Got
away with what?

GEOFFREY: His
sex-life. Nobody knows anything about that.

HILARY: That's
because he never had one.

GEOFFREY: Of course
he had one.

HILARY: That's
blasphemy! Jesus was pure.

GEOFFREY: On the
contrary, if you deny Jesus had a sex life do you know what you are doing?

HILARY: What?

GEOFFREY: You're
denying the Christian religion, that's what.

HILARY: Never.
He was God. What would God want with a sex-life?

GEOFFREY: Ah, but the
point is, he was God come to earth as Man.
That is the whole point. When he died on the cross his suffering was supposed
to wash away our sins. Now, if he didn't have a sex-life, who's to say he
suffered at all? The trouble with you airy-fairy hymn-singing lot is that
everything, including Jesus’ arse is up in the clouds. It's all gentle, meek,
and mild. You forget that if Joshua ben
Joseph bled like us then, like us, he also had to shit, piss, burp and fart.
But you don't like the idea of Jesus doing all that do you? He did it all the
same. Does that somehow make him much more of a man and something less of a
god? Gods somehow don't seem the same if they have jammy toes, right? And, if
you deny his sex-life, you destroy the very cornerstone on which the whole
Christian church is built, that God came to earth as one of us. It doesn't
matter if his sex-life was simply wet dreams and water-stiffs first thing in
the morning the fact remains, he had one. I mean, we know he had the equipment
because we know about his circumcision. That's in the Bible. You can't have a
penis and not have a sex-life, not unless you're completely impotent and
completely innocent, a highly unlikely combination. But, if true, very unfair
and a bit of a heavenly con-trick wouldn't you say?

HILARY: You are
the most awful person I have ever met.

GEOFFREY: Oh? Why?

HILARY: You
have absolutely no respect for anything or anybody.

GEOFFREY: I have
every respect.

HILARY: No you
don't. You should consider feelings, other people's feelings. How do you
suppose they feel when they hear you talking like that? And besides, you're
supposed to worship and adore. There's no need to dwell on... other matters.

GEOFFREY: You mean,
if you thought Jesus had smelly feet that would automatically stop you
worshiping and adoring? Is that how you treat your friends? You love them only
when they smell of scented soap? Some love that is.

HILARY: I don't
want to talk about it anymore. It's wicked. And you can't hide from God. He is
everywhere. He sees everything.

Monday, December 16, 2013

To continue
my dissertation on corrupt clergy, corrupt in more ways than one but what the
hell they are only human after all even if God has singled them out to enjoy
his special favours. We’ve mentioned greed now let’s go a bit further on that subject
before we chat about sexual peccadilloes, 99% of human sexuality in the eyes of
the religious is spelt s-i-n though why the Almighty with a whole universe and more
in which to occupy Himself should be in the least interested as to who I’ve
been to bed with or whether I masturbate or not is beyond me.

But back to
money money money. Ron.L.hubbard, the
founder of Scientology said if you want to make money you won’t get very far
writing science-fiction; you should start a new religion (which of course he
did.) Capitalising on a religion that already exists amounts to the same thing
I suppose. Let us take as just one example, the Televangelist couple, Paul and
Jan Crouch and remember when you read these figures churches do not pay tax.

Their Christian
television station TBN is said to be the third largest in America and
around the world TBN is carried by stations and cable systems to millions of
homes: 5000 television stations, 33 satellites, the Internet and cable systems
around the world. What Goebbels wouldn’t have given to have all that for
propaganda purposes?

TBN’s Annual
income, the latest figures available being for 2006 was $200.7 million –
Expenditure $141.1. stashing away the extra $59.6 million. Assets evidently are
close to a billion.

In 1998 the
Crouch’s combined income was $400000.

In 2008 it
had risen (including Paul F. Crouch Jun. as Vice President) to $994637.

What it
runs at currently I hate to think.

Apart from
their own luxury house at Newport Beach the
Crouches have the use of 30 TBN owned residences in California,
Tennessee, and Ohio. In fact this good Christian family are
worthy of a dozen blogs just to show how affluent they are and how the money
goes. Mind you Joel Osteen has just had a mansion built at a cost over $71
million. He says it is a gift from the Lord.

But now
let’s move on to sin. Catholic priests and choirboys is old hat. It’s been going
on for centuries but it is only in the last few years that it has become a cause
célèbre. A number of televangelists in America famous from coast to coast have
tearfully admitted their sins to the world via their favourite medium, sometimes
with brave little wife gazing at her man adoringly and inwardly humiliated and
seething no doubt, as he asks the world for forgiveness, which isn’t always
forthcoming (Judge not lest ye yourselves be judged.)Witness Jim Bakker after
bedding a church secretary by the name of Jessica Hahn, Mind you he also went to
jail for five years having been convicted of fraud. Jimmy Swaggart, preaching
to more than a hundred nations around the world tearfully admitted in front of
70000 that he had sinned with a prostitute. Charles Fox Parham, the ‘Father of
the Pentecostal Movement’ was indicted in Texas on a charge of sodomy. There are more
of course including one whose name escapes me. This one was rabidly homophobic
until it was revealed he was having it off with rent boys in seedy hotels.
Could it have been the anti-gay Baptist George Rekers who it was discovered
hired a rent- boy to go holiday with him for ten days? He said it was to carry
his luggage. Do me a favour, pu-lease!

But all
that is leading up to the main story which involves both money and sin and does
not take place n America
but in good old Blighty. This is the story of the Rev. Paul Flowers. He was
Chairman of the Co-op Bank on a salary of £132000, not exactly a fortune but
not too bad at over two grand a week, especially as there was another £60000
for acting as vice chairman.

At various times he was Trustee of investment funds and
property of the Methodist church, Superintendant at Methodist church, Member of
Labour’s Financial and Advisory Board, Chairman of the Lifeline Project, a
charity which helps drug uses, Member of the board at Advertising Standards
Authority.

He has been
accused of claiming £75000 in false expenses which he denies maintaining they
were all legitimate. Because of lack of evidence no action will be taken until there
is a full investigation. No doubt, being ever so contrite and offering to pay
back a percentage he would have received a mild slap on the wrist but he hasn’t
waited for the outcome. It is believed he has fled to Thailand “since
sordid revelations about his private life emerged last Sunday.” Yes, once more
it was evidently rent boys so both greed and sin walked hand in hand to ensure
his downfall. The first might elicit a certain sympathy by the faithful, the
second never.

A Brazilian
pastor has been arrested for convincing his followers his penis contained holy
milk. Can you believe that? Sadly sadly yes I can.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

There is
something truly crazy, perverse, and dangerous about people handicapped by
religious beliefs. They seem to make up their own rules as the fancy takes them
and of course, it is all down to instructions given to them by God. I think of
parents who under religious instruction instead of getting medical help allow
their children to die while they pray. Prayers proving to be ineffectual this
is tantamount to murder.

Pastors at some Pentecostal churches in Kenya are conducting prayer
services to “cure” patients infected with HIV, confiscating their
anti-retroviral drugs and charging a fee for their healing prayers.

.“I believe people can be healed of all kinds of sickness,
including HIV, through prayers,” said Pastor Joseph Maina of AgmoPrayerMountain, a Pentecostal church on the outskirts of Nairobi. “We usually guide
them. We don’t ask for money, but we ask them to leave some seed money that
they please.”

INERELA an international interfaith network reports that 10
people a month on average undergo pastors’ “miracle cures” in Nairobi. They have documented 2,000 such
cases throughout Kenya.

Victims say that desperation and fear of being stigmatized
and rejected by family make the pastors’ offers of cure by prayer seem
appealing. It also seems easier than sticking to a lifelong drug regimen.

“We were very desperate after realizing we had been infected
as young women,” said Margaret Lavonga, who almost died after attending a
healing prayer service several years ago.

She and other subjects were taken to a clinic for a “test”
that declared them HIV-free, after their drugs were burned and they paid a $36
fee. Lavonga crusaded with the pastors throughout Nairobi’s slums, talking up the miracle
prayer cure.

“I was upbeat, but after two weeks I started falling sick,”
Lavonga said. “When I was tested, the virus was still in me and had multiplied
since I was not taking the drugs.”

The Kenyan Daily Post reported on an incident this
August in which a pastor paraded an emaciated HIV-positive boy on Kiss TV, a Kenyan
television channel, asking for viewer donations of 310 Kenyan shillings, or
$3.58, before he would pray for the boy. Kenyans were outraged, accusing the
pastor and TV channel of “exploitation” and the “filthiest injustice of human
dignity” in their online comments.

Sheer greed seems to be at the bottom of so many charlatan
pastors’ directives from the almighty and they get away with it to the tune of
billions proving Barnum’s quip about a sucker born every minute. Unfortunately,
as the ministers line their pockets, build their mansions, fly their executive
jets, so many of the suckers forking out
what little they've got are people in genuine pain who need genuine help, not
being fed and believing in a load of codswallop about heaven and hell. I was always
under the impression that these beliefs went out centuries ago but obviously
not. Neither has the primitive belief in witches, I have just watched a
gut-churning video of half a dozen Kenyan men and women accused of witchcraft
being beaten, kicked, stomped on and forced into a ditch where they ware
covered with brush and burnt alive. When they tried to crawl out they were
kicked back in. I have never witnessed anything so brutal and there was quite a
crowd standing by watching. Are we really living in the twenty-first century?

And the murderous bastards doing the killing call themselves
Christians.

Mention of the word heaven and I am going to go off at a
tangent with something that’s always intrigued me. ‘Heaven’ is a proper noun,
it is a place, a place has to be situated somewhere, so where exactly is
heaven? According to scripture Jesus came out of the tomb (surprising after
three days his body hadn’t started to decompose but that’s all part of the
magic I suppose) mooches about for forty days and then ascends bodily into
heaven. Later mater would follow his example. Now it was not a spirit but a
flesh and blood body that, defying the law of gravity ‘ascended’ into heaven,
but where in the great blue yonder up there did it actually go to? Apart from gravity
it had to suffer extreme cold and lack of oxygen. Since those far off days man
has been exploring that selfsame blue yonder in close-up as it were and there
has been no sign of heaven. It could still be discovered somewhere in the
universe I suppose but somehow I doubt it.

For the religious greed can also lead to greater
things. It could lay a whole country at your doorstep. The Reverend Doctor
William Tolbert, a Baptist minister from Charleston
ended up president of Liberia.
Exchange the word president for dictator and the Reverend and the whole Tolbert
family had nine years in which to have their way and bury their snouts in the
trough before being executed by firing squad. At the urging of both Christian
and Muslims a court in India
has reinstated the law against homosexuality making it a criminal offence with
possible sentence of ten years.

Monday, December 9, 2013

The
invasion of the millipedes. Every year at this time they appear, seemingly out
of nowhere and really with nowhere to go as they cross a wide open space of
floor that to a human being would be any number of miles. The Greeks call them
forty-legs (sarandapotharousa) but however many legs they might have every time
I see one I have been fascinated to know more about them, in particular what
they eat. So finally, my curiosity getting the better of me, I looked them up on
the internet. According to BBC Nature millipedes are a common class of
anthropoids with over 10000 named species! Wot! Ten thousand? Wikipedia says
12000! Millipedes, centipedes, sow bugs and pillbugs tend to move into houses
during brief periods in the spring or fall. By the way, if you’ve never seen
what a sow bug looks like, look ‘em up.
You have never in your life seen such a weird nightmarish looking creature. No
science fiction writer has ever described one I shouldn’t think and one (giant
and menacing of course) has never as far as I know appeared on “Doctor Who.”

Millipedes
eat decaying leaves and dead matter which again raises the question why do they
come into the house where they are hardly likely to find any dead leaves or
decaying matter?Millipedes are slow moving and can
be easily distinguished from the somewhat similar and related centipedes which move rapidly, are carnivorous, and have a single pair of legs for each
body segment. The scientific study of millipedes is known
as diplopodology, and a scientist who studies them is called a
diplopodologist. Imagine you’re at a swish cocktail party and someone asks what
you do for a living and you tell them you’re a diplopodologist. That would
bring the conversation to a sudden stop.

Some millipedes are
considered household pests, includingsomewhich
infest thatched roofs in India.Other
species exhibit periodicalswarming
behaviour which can result in home invasions;crop
damage, train delays, or even train crashes and derailments. Millipedes also
appear infolklore andtraditional
medicinearound the world. Many cultures ascribe millipede
activity with coming rains.In theYoruba
culture ofNigeria, millipedes are used in pregnancy and business rituals, and crushed
millipedes are used to treat fever,whitlow, andconvulsions
in children.InZambia smashed millipede pulp is used to treat wounds, and
in theCameroonmillipede juice is used to treat earache. InMalaysiamillipede
secretions are used to poison arrow tips.

With certain Himalayantribes, dry millipede smoke is used to treathaemorrhoids. Now there is
something to make the mind boggle. Don’t lose your balance whilst squatting
over the fire or the results could be painful. Baked balls, barbecued scrotums
are not to be laughed at. So there you are; a short essay on the millipede and
its manifold uses.

These last few evenings we’ve been having a delightful time
watching one of our very favourite soaps, “The Golden Girls.” Just as funny,
warm, and true as it was when we first saw it, how many years ago? 1985. With
quite an amount of sexual references not all that usual for the time, I wonder
how it went down in the Bible belt back then. I have to admit I’m not a great
one for soaps or half hour comedies. I probably watched four or five
“Eastenders” not with much enthusiasm, a number of “Emmerdale” but that was
because, living in Yorkshire, I was hoping to
write for it: a forlorn hope. Loved “Steptoe and Son,” have never seen a single episode of "Coronation Street," programmes like "The Army Game" were simply appalling and more up to date we really enjoy“Ugly
Betty” and “Two and a Half Men,” though it tended to go off the boil slightly when Sheen
left and the beautiful Ashton Kutcher took his place. Absolutely loved Jon
Cryer’s performance and there was real chemistry between them all in the
original cast.

How about someone producing a soap based on the WestBoro
Baptist church? It could be titled “Gays the cause of every calamity,” or "Friendly Faggot."

On a New York street a
woman dressed in a frock of rainbow colours stands holding up a large placard reading
“Gay marriage killed the dinosaurs.” Are people really this crazy?

Thursday, December 5, 2013

The question of homosexuality, except for those
unfortunately still suffering, even facing death, for being who they are, must
be becoming rather boring but, as the western world, with Christian
exceptions, becomes more enlightened,
more tolerant, less superstitious, so in the Middle East it would seem the
exact opposite is happening. As the West takes one step forward the Muslim
world takes two steps back. By Christian exceptions I think of the American
Bible Belt, the Russian Orthodox church, and now the Greeks who once upon a
time before the advent of Christianity knew exactly what it was all about both
in myth and reality, have entered the fray with dire threats of excommunication!

In the West some parents are learning that if they have a
gay child it isn’t because they have done something wrong and should feel guilt
in some way, and there is simply nothing to be done about it except accept and
continue to love and cherish.

Recently a boy gave as his Bar Mitzvah speech a defense of
same sex marriage. What? A thirteen year old? And in the synagogue of all
places?

In Muslim countries women buried from head to toe in black
simply do not exist outside the home. In the West women (for the most part
though here is still a way to go) are treated for what they are worth. The
Church of England has 29 women bishops and number 30 to be ordained in Ireland. What
happened to the Biblical injunction that women should know their place, stay in
it, subject to their husband’s will and keep their mouths shut?

During Macy’s Thanksgiving parade a number was performed by
the cast of the award winning musical “Kinky Boots” which caused an immediate
outcry from conservatives.

“Kinky Boots disgusting and wrong.”

“Kinky Boots is what’s wrong with America.”

“Kinky Boots is a disgrace”

“After watching the Kinky Boots” show from the parade I have
a little less hope for humanity.”

And the answers are quite illuminating. Here are only two.

“Dear World: if you are personally outraged (or, even if
you're miffed...I'll accept miffed) by this specific performance at the Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade, I truly don't want to know or associate with you. I
will never understand your POV. That's my problem. I accept full
responsibility. Let's just not associate with each other. Ok? Thanks.”

“All of these
outraged people should lighten up and get over it. Teacher for 37 years,
parent, and grandparent. Kids can handle life. Parents sometimes...... Not so
much. Life is too short to get upset over silly things. Too many serious things
to worry about.”

Lebanon's
capital, Beirut,
comes alive under darkness. Its narrow alleyways meander into streets full of
bars.

The locals, many dressed in designer clothes, sit on the
verandas drinking cocktails till dawn. The city's liberal demeanour really does
make it like no other place in a deeply conservative region.

But Beirut
has another side to it that highlights this difference - it has an underground scene
that is private yet very much alive with discreet gay bars and clubs.

However, recent events are said to have challenged Lebanon's relatively
tolerant reputation.

Last year, a Beirut
cinema was raided by police who arrested more than 30 people believed to be
homosexual. They were each subjected to anal examinations by a doctor at a
police station to ascertain whether they had been having "unnatural"
intercourse. The raid evidently sparked a public outcry but then psychiatrist
Nabil Khoury went on prime-time television and told the nation that
homosexuality was "a disease that needs to be treated". (Still? Will
they never learn?)

Four months later, censors blocked a screening at the Beirut
International Film Festival of a French film that features a gay love story.
The interior ministry cited a news report which attributed the decision to
"obscene scenes of kissing between gay men, philandering, naked men and
sexual intercourse between men

In an empty bar on the outskirts of Beirut, a man in his 20s told how he had
recently been arrested for being gay. The man revealed that he had been
subjected to an anal examination that was painful and incredibly humiliating.

"Obviously it was really demeaning. It made me feel
like I had no body rights, like the government had access to my body," he
said.

"I wasn't stable psychologically. I was really
depressed for a really long time. I was feeling so resentful, and was just
staying by myself all the time."

Even though the government strongly condemned and banned
anal tests after the cinema raid, the BBC has spoken to dozens of gay people in
the country who strongly believe it is still going on.

"These tests have been banned by the ministry of
justice and the syndicate of physicians," says Ahmad Saleh, from the
Lebanese LGBT rights group Helem.

"However, we have reports from people who have been
arrested, who told us that police officers had threatened them by saying that
they would be subjected to these tests unless they confessed to whatever charge
they were facing."

Anal testing is widely discredited as a method of
determining sexuality. Some gay people avoid anal sex and people with other
conditions can be wrongly identified as gay. The Lebanese Psychiatric Society
has now publicly stated that homosexuality is not a mental disorder and does
not require treatment, but campaigners think that is not enough.

."The way gay and lesbian people are treated by wider
society, the serious abuse, the torture and ill treatment to which they're
subjected to in police cells and detention is wrong," says David Mepham, UK
Director of Human Rights Watch, which published a report in June on the
abuse of LGBT people in police custody.

"We've documented very serious patterns of abuse. That
abuse needs to end, and this culture of impunity needs to end."

In countries like Saudi Arabia
and Iran,
being homosexual can lead to the death penalty.

The World Health Organisation and many countries in the West
stopped considering homosexuality disease years ago, and Lebanon became the first Arab
country to do so. Even so, there are many in the country whose views are in
line with the teachings of Islam and Christianity, which are traditionally
opposed to homosexuality.

Some gays are optimistic about the future. They say the
media is devoting more time and attention to the topic of homosexuality, and
hope that this will help break down prejudices and stereotypes.

But the fear is palpable and illustrates the long journey
they have yet to travel in order to be accepted in this "liberal
city".

Monday, December 2, 2013

So, one of the
greatest and most generous of spirit yet seemingly modest of men has finally gone
to that Bourne from which no traveller returns and (with the exception perhaps
of a minority whose lives have been turned upside down) it is not only South
Africa that will mourn him but the whole world has lost something precious. It
is a great pity there are not more like him. I refer of course to Nelson
Mandela and it seems fitting that at 94 he had a number of years to enjoy after
his long incarceration of eighteen years on RobinIsland.
I never knew him, I only knew of him, yet the news of his passing has brought
me to tears. Is there any other world figure whose death would do that? Offhand
I can think of no one. Mandela was not unique. There have been others like him
throughout history, Ghandi for example, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, Joyce
Banda, Jose Mujica, the very opposite of the Mugabes and Zumas of this world
but oh, they are so few and so far between and the world needs men and women of
their stature so very badly.

Nelson Mandela
evidently died back in June but whatever the reason the South African
government and the family for some reason have kept it a secret.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Dear
Creationists, so much for intelligent design. So the complexity of the human
eye amazes you and therefore must have been intelligently designed but what
about all those phenomenon great and small that scream “design maybe but go
back to the drawing board.” For everything beautiful there are too many
opposites that simply deny intelligent design. For example the man embraced by
the Pope whose entire body is covered in disfiguring weeping painful lumps, (neurofibromatosis)
why, like The Elephant Man, Joseph Merrick, was he singled out for such a fate?
What brought intelligent design to mind was reading on the news that 51 ponies
in The New Forest have died agonising deaths by gorging themselves on a glut of
windfall acorns which are evidently fatal to both horses and cattle. You would
have thought an intelligent designer would have installed in the beasts a
faculty for knowing what for their species is poisonous.

Creative
Design has also produced the greatest stupidity. “When I’m not talking to God,
I’m listening for His directions. I even moved to America to be closer to Him.” This
had to be said jokingly surely, I mean we all know God is universal and you are
closest to Him in a garden be it in New Zealand or America but no, it was said
by Ray banana man Comfort, a believer in Genesis if ever there was one and,
according to him, the banana having been intelligently designed to fit in the
human mouth only goes to prove the existence of God.

‘The
Creator of the universe went to great lengths to create the foreskin then
insisted you cut it off”. - Makes sense – Richard Dawkins.

In 1993 Jawdat Ibrahim won $23 million in the Illinois state lottery and opened up a restaurant in Israel. He
offers a massive 50% discount on the bill for all the customers who switch
off their cell phones while dining in his restaurant.
Why?
Ibrahim is hoping to bring back the appreciation for food, conversation and
good company.
In a 2010 survey, 67% of diners surveyed in Los Angeles,
64% in New York and 63% in San Francisco agreed that texting, checking
e-mail or talking on a cell phone is rude while in company.
A Los Angeles
restaurant, ‘Eva,’ offers a 5% discount to customers for leaving their phones
with the host during their meal.

.A deli in Vermont
actually charges people an extra $3 for using their cell phones.
For once just enjoy at least half an hour of food and good
company with your friends or family and forget about technology.

By the same token I wish some restaurateurs would realize
that loud music (not to everyone’s taste in the first place) kills conversation
stone dead and it really is true that silence is golden

When a writer creates a character does he or she have a definite
image in mind as to exactly what that fictional character looks like? I think
so, in the same way as one imagines what a certain film location looks like
only to find the locations manager invariably had a very different idea and has
chosen somewhere not remotely like your imagining. So, whenever I watch
television I look out for any actor who fits my mental image of what Thornton
King looks like. Thornton King, for those not au fait with my writing, is my
private eye in a series of comedy thrillers, the first of which is Dead On Time. I’ve seen half a dozen or
so actors on screen who approximate to my imagining but now I have seen one who
is without a doubt Thornton King exactly as I have always pictured him. He is
an Irish actor by the name of Allen Leech and I came across him thanks to
YouTube and a rather delightful Irish film, Cowboys
and Angels. I believe he has been appearing in Downton Abbey but never having watched it I wouldn’t know what his
performance there is like. I would certainly cast him on the strength of his
performance in Cowboy and Angels. Tall,
handsome, talented, just the right age (32) and oozing Irish charm.

So, if here is an astute producer out there who would
recognize Dead on Time as a
potentially terrific movie, (or television) and any of the other Thornton King
adventures for that matter, look no further than Allen Leech for your leading
man.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Moore than
3500 people were killed during three decades of fighting in Northern Ireland,
40000 injured, and what has been gained? Are things that much different now to
when it all started? Have the divisions in Northern Ireland society been closed? John Larkin, Attorney General has said he
believes there should be no more prosecutions for past killings which I suppose
is a positive step seeing as to how some IRA killers have become respectable
members of parliament and vendettas can go on for ever. In the absence
of legal proceedings, Mr. Larkin believes relatives of Troubles victims should
be given as much access as possible to records to help them find out what
happened to their loved ones.

"We can't really be surprised if people don't tell us as
long as the theoretical threat of prosecution remains," he said.”

So what about relatives of victims who say they want the
killers to be brought before the courts?

Mr. Larkin said there was little realistic possibility of
successful prosecutions taking place.

"I have had conversations with people in that very
position and I have drawn attention to the extreme improbability of criminal
proceedings ever taking place," he said. Troubles victims have called on
politicians to prioritize dealing with the past and put in place new measures
to deliver truth and justice.

They also want new mechanisms to investigate past human
rights violations and abuses. Alex Bunting, an IRA bomb victim, said: "No
one wants to listen - especially within politics."

Michael Gallagher, of the Omagh Self-help and Support Group,
whose son Aidan was killed in the Omagh bomb in 1998, said: "Victims feel
like they have become an unwelcome embarrassment to some politicians in Belfast, London and Dublin. There are
thousands of other victims and bereaved family members across Northern Ireland
who want to see dealing with the past' given a new, high priority by our
political leaders.

Danny Toland, whose father John Toland was shot dead by the
UDA in Eglinton, County Londonderry, in 1976, said: "The murder of my
father was investigated by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), but we were
left with more questions than answers, particularly around the extent of
collusion which took place between the UDA and the security forces, which the
HET could only say was 'likely'.

"What is now needed is a new, more independent and
effective means of investigating all past cases where there are outstanding
questions."

Mr. Bunting, who was badly injured by an IRA booby-trap car
bomb in Belfast
in 1991, said: "As victims, we find ourselves having to drive this process
forward.

"The political will to grasp the nettle of the past has
been missing. That now needs to change.

"They are pinning their hopes on these talks now, to
deliver the truth and the answers that will allow them to turn the page on this
painful chapter for all of Northern
Ireland.

Amnesty has called for the UK government to establish a new
method of dealing with the past that would permit controversial killings and
attacks carried out by all sides, including state agents, to be
re-investigated. Over the last decade a patchwork of measures, including
isolated investigations, have failed to establish the full truth about the
violations and abuses of the past.

If Nazi war criminals after nearly seventy years since the
end of World War Two can still be found and prosecuted why is N.
Ireland proving so difficult? Are there establishment cover-ups
somewhere down the line? Or maybe it’s because Protestants and Catholics still
can’t really talk to one another. Sad but, while still divided by religion,
only too human. Witness the ongoing Shia Sunni conflict in the Middle East and Pakistan
for example. So what eventually will happen in Afghanistan? And how will the
Syrian crisis which evidently is already spilling over into Lebanon end? Anybody care to hazard
a guess?

Well, here I am confined to the house and a wheelchair, only
to go out in the car, getting in with assistance and great difficulty and
finding getting out even more difficult. My legs haven’t completely gone but
walking with frame just a few yards leaves me breathless and the culprits, the cardiologist
who examined me yesterday says, are two blocked arteries; but for the moment nothing
more than a change in medication is prescribed to see how it goes. The
degeneration has happened so fast, in a matter of weeks, but that’s all part of
the aging process I suppose. Now that I am virtually immobile I think
nostalgically of all the little everyday things I would like to do. Strange how
one misses them.

Monday, November 18, 2013

What clever
clogs we are, geniuses, geniuses at spoiling the planet. Already there is the
belief growing more and more that, if humanity is to survive, other planets
need to be populated, no doubt sooner or later to go the same way as mother
earth, human beings in some ways being as stupid as they are. It’s like that list someone made up of the
Muslim countries in which Muslims were unhappy followed by a list of where they
are happy; the US, Britain, France Holland, Sweden, Australia, etcetera, as they try to turn these host
countries into ones similar to the ones they left in which they were unhappy.

It is
estimated the Brazilian rain forest has been degraded 28% this year. 28%
doesn’t sound so much until one realises it is over a quarter.

Whatever
one might feel or not feel about the shark, it is a part of the eco-system and
its numbers off the coast of Costa
Rica are diminishing at alarming speed. This
is because the fishermen believe they have found a way around the law
forbidding “finning.” Before the law was passed the shark’s fins were cut off
and the shark tossed back into the sea to bleed to death. Apart from the
cruelty involved, the sheer wastage of using that small portion of the animal
for a delicacy food is deplorable. The fishermen have evidently come to the
conclusion they can bypass the law by not tossing the shark into the sea but
leaving it to die in the boat before doing so.

American
customs have crushed six tons of illegal ivory from small artefacts to full
length tusks, the amount they reckon to have come from the death of 2000
elephants.

Got any news or Gossip? Send it …

Locals call the area between Naples
and Caserta the
"Triangle of Death" because of toxic fumes after waste burning. Some
10 million tonnes of industrial waste has reportedly been dumped in the region
over the past 20 years. A spokesman for the environmental group Legambiente,
which organized a protest involving 10000 people parading trough Naples, said nearly 440 businesses in central and northern
Italy
had been taking part in the illegal activity. As more and more illegal dumps
are found, the Italian government says it is starting an extensive project of
cleaning the contaminated area. The local mafia, the Camorra, is suspected of
securing lucrative contracts to dispose of waste and then dumping much of it
illegally.

But here are two contrasting stories, one of which gives out
just the teeniest bit of light to illuminate our darkness.

Melissa Bachman, an
American hunter has sparked outrage from South Africans after she posted
pictures on Facebook of herself smiling behind a dead male lion she killed on
Nov 1.

Bachman has a hunting show on US television called Deadly
Passion. Her recent hunting trip to South Africa has been met with
outrage and resulted in petitions to stop her hunting and getting a visa to
return to SA. One can’t help but notice in the photograph that the gun she
holds is equipped with a high powered

telescopic sight so the lion was hundreds of yards away,
probably static and there was absolutely no danger to the intrepid hunter! What
kind of pleasure, what kind of thrill, what kind of satisfaction can that
bring? You might as well be shooting at a fair ground target.

And here is the contrasting story. A group of Somalis over a
four mile run ran to earth a pair of cheetahs that had been killing their
goats, captured them and handed them over to the Kenya Wildlife Authorities.
How, one wonders did they manage to pit themselves against one of the fastest
animals on earth? Evidently they waited
until the hottest part of the day and then simply kept going until the
animals were exhausted – exhausted but still alive – no fucking stupid,
grinning American bitch here with her high powered rifle and telescopic sight.
Just, what you might call, a bunch of primitive herdsmen who showed her up for
what she’s worth and who for me, gave the world, momentarily, that tiny spark
of light.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Just how I
wonder is the world going to get out of this terrible recession that grows
worse by the day? Youth unemployment seems to be on a consistent rise with no
solution in sight and not just here in Greece. Young Greeks are heading
off to other European countries in the hopes of finding work and at the same
time youth from those countries are heading for Australia with the same hopes
despite the fact that youth unemployment in some places there is as bad as it
is here. It is something of a Gordian knot and there is no Alexander to unravel
it. As the population explodes and computers advance in technology almost day
by day taking over tasks once performed by human beings the situation can only
get worse.

Received
this from a friend and it is positively so brilliant it makes up today’s Blog.

Subject:
Teaching Maths in Britain

1. Teaching Maths In 1970
A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100..
His cost of production is 4/5 of the price.
What is his profit?

2. Teaching Maths In 1980
A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100.
His cost of production is 80% of the price.
What is his profit?

3. Teaching Maths In 1990
A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100.
His cost of production is £80.
How much was his profit?

4. Teaching Maths In 2000
A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100.
His cost of production is £80 and his profit is £20.
Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Maths In 2005
A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate
and cares nothing for the habit of animals or the preservation of our
woodlands.
Your assignment: Discuss how the birds and squirrels might feel as the logger
cut down their homes just for a measly profit of £20.

6. Teaching Maths In 2009
A logger is arrested for trying to cut down a tree in case it may be offensive
to religious groups not consulted in the felling license. He is also fined a
£100 as his chainsaw is in breach of Health and Safety legislation as it deemed
too dangerous and could cut something.. He has used the chainsaw for over 20
years without incident however he does not have the correct certificate of
competence and is therefore considered to be a recidivist and habitual
criminal. His DNA is sampled and his details circulated throughout all
government agencies. He protests and is taken to court and fined another £100
because he is such an easy target.

When he is released he returns to find 'travellers' have cut down half his wood
to build a camp on his land. He tries to throw them off but is arrested,
prosecuted for harassing an ethnic minority, imprisoned and fined a further
£100. While he is in jail again the 'travellers' cut down the rest of his wood
and sell it on the black market for £100 cash. They also have a departure BBQ
of squirrel and pheasant and leave behind several tons of rubbish and asbestos
sheeting.

The forester on release is warned that failure to clear the fly tipped rubbish
immediately at his own cost is an offence. He complains and is arrested for
environmental pollution, breach of the peace and invoiced £12,000 plus VAT for
safe disposal costs by a regulated government contractor.

Your assignment: How many times is the logger going to have to be arrested and
fined before he realises that he is never going to make £20 profit by hard
work, give up, sign onto the dole and live off the state for the rest of his
life?

7. Teaching Maths In 2010
A logger doesn’t sell a lorry load of timber because he can’t get a loan to buy
a new lorry because his bank has spent all his and their money on a derivative
of securitised debt related to sub- prime mortgages in Alabama and lost the lot
with only some government money left to pay a few million pound bonuses to
their senior directors and the traders who made the biggest losses.

The logger struggles to pay the £1,200 road tax on his old lorry
however, as it was built in the 1970s it no longer meets the emissions
regulations and he is forced to scrap it.

Some Bulgarian loggers buy the lorry from the scrap merchant and put it back on
the road. They undercut everyone on price for haulage and send their cash back
home, while claiming unemployment for themselves and their relatives. If
questioned they speak no English and it is easier to deport them at the
governments expense. Following their holiday back home they return to the UK
with different names and fresh girls and start again. The logger protests, is
accused of being a bigoted racist and as his name is on the side of his old
lorry he is forced to pay £1,500 registration fees as a gang master.

The Government borrows more money to pay more to the bankers as bonuses are not
cheap. The parliamentarians feel they are missing out and claim the difference
on expenses and allowances.

Monday, November 11, 2013

The Pope
has done something quite remarkable, a gesture I should think none of his
predecessors would have made. During a walkabout he stopped to intimately
embrace a man so hideously deformed that in the photographs one cannot
delineate his features. I have to admit even just looking at those photographs
it is a bit gut-churning. I doubt very much, no I know, that I would not have been
able to do it. This simple gesture must have endeared him to millions, even
folk like me who have no truck with religion and who look upon he pope simply as
CEO of a very large, mega rich universal corporation probably, taking
everything into account, one of the richest corporations there is. Just think
of the real estate for starters.

What does
one know about the city of Naples, except Elmer Rice wrote a play titled “See
Naples And Die” and that it is a hotbed of Mafia type Activity, known as the
Camorra, evidently the most ruthless and bloody-minded criminal organisation in
the world? Oh yes, there are the naughty murals of Pompeii
and there’s Vesuvius of course and but did you know Naples’ patron saint is Gennarius who happens
also to be the patron saint of volcanoes? Sounds pretty reasonable.

The Vatican is showing off the sumptuous 'San
Gennaro' collection of gems said to be worth more than England's crown jewels; treasure formed of
objects donated in tribute to the saint, 70 pieces of sumptuous jewellery
transported under heavily armed guard to a museum in Rome. The exhibit features an empty reliquary
purportedly holding San Gennaro’s Blood. Blood legend says that 'miraculously'
liquefies during religious ceremonies.
Hidden away for centuries, the Treasure of San Gennaro is formed of precious
objects donated in tribute. It has rarely left the city and spent centuries
locked in a vault, largely forgotten by the wider world.
Known in English as Januarius, the bishop of Naples was martyred in the 3rd century under
the Emperor Diocletian. First of all he was supposed to be attacked by wild
animals but apparently the animals were loath to do their bit so he was
beheaded.
Thousands gather three times a year to see whether a vial of his coagulated
blood will turn to liquid, which they believe to be a miracle bringing good
fortune to the city.
In the 1520s when Naples was struggling with plague, war and the eruption of
Mount Vesuvius, surviving citizens pledged to build a chapel for the saint in
return for his protection.
The hoard includes what is thought to be one of the most precious pieces of
jewellery in the world - the necklace of San Gennaro, begun in 1679 to adorn a
gold and silver bust containing the skull of the saint.
Separate ornate pieces of jewellery were forged together over centuries to make
a necklace. These include a cross of diamonds and emeralds donated by French
Emperor Napoleon and many gifts from monarchs dating from years when the Kingdom of Naples was a major power. This necklace
tells the history of Europe, and includes a
relatively humble pair of earrings, the only possession of a commoner spared in
a disease epidemic in 1844 who donated the family heirloom to the saint.
But most breathtaking of all, another centrepiece is an enormous golden mitre,
the ceremonial headdress of bishops, commissioned to crown the saint's bust in
its annual procession and made of 3,300 diamonds and hundreds of rubies and
emeralds, given in many separate donations.
So much for the vow of poverty and just add that mitre if nothing else to Rome’s riches.

So where in the scheme of things does money come in as far
as god is concerned?

Bill Maher (love the man) on television recently said that
southern fundies have given up on Christ’s basic teaching in favour of a ‘f***
you, drop dead’ philosophy applied to anyone who isn’t of their particular persuasion.
He tells two stories about tipping in restaurants. In one a group of Christian
diners refused to give their young waiter a tip because of his homosexual
lifestyle, although they admitted the service was excellent. If they seriously
believed by denying him a tip it would change his lifestyle shows you just how stupid,
ignorant and bigoted these people can be. The second story involves a receipt
across which is scrawled, “I give 10% to God, why should I tip you?”

This is arrant nonsense, what possible need or use has god
got for her ten percent? The money isn’t going to line the pockets of his robes
but the pockets of her charlatan pastor whose mega-church makes him millions
and which he informs his congregation is a gift from god. No, it is not. It is
a gift from the gullible, nothing more, nothing less.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Spent all
morning in the doctor’s surgery and all afternoon sleeping to recover so forgot
to post Monday’s Blog. Monday is always a bad day for a visit to the doctor and
the surgery was packed but Elizabeth
won’t be thrown by this. She takes all the time it needs to see to each patient
and she must be totally exhausted at the end of the day.

This has
nothing to do with my visit but last Saturday I died. You might not find that
very interesting but it is very interesting to me as it is always what I
imagined death to be like. I was sitting here at the computer and I suddenly
realised I had blacked out. I don’t know how long for before I came too in the
blink of an eyelid; it could have just been a matter of seconds, could have
been longer.

For a while
now I’ve tended to doze and drop off and it is when I tend to topple over
sideway on the chair that I wake up but this was entirely different.

There was
no feeling of sleepiness, no drowsing, no dozing off and, in fact, I didn’t
know it had actually happened until I found myself, still sitting upright,
staring at the screen slightly bewildered until I realised what had happened –
instantaneous black, nothingness, Did my heart for a time stop beating? I don’t
know and there was no way of finding out. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. Anyway
it was a unique experience.

The blood
tests from Monday’s visit to Elizabeth
indicate that I have to cut down drastically on the rat poison. Glad of that, I
hate the stuff especial as it discolours my arms and hands in so ugly a fashion.
The second test indicated anaemia which is probably the cause of (a) dozing off
all the time and (b) breathlessness and (c) legs that grow steadily weaker, so
Douglas reckons he is going to beef me up on broccoli (hate it) and ox liver
(hate it) but I suppose I might as well submit or give way to a wheelchair
(hate the very thought.)

The first
couple of years I was in England
I wrote my first play, “The River of Sand,” set in South Africa natch and a story
around the Boer War. Apart from a play reading many years ago it has never been
done but I suddenly, a few days ago, decided to look at it again and maybe do
some work on it and I am so glad I did. I’m also glad that Chris read it, made
some astute criticisms and I realised time- scale wise and character wise I was
all over the place. Father at one point became grandfather, brother at one
point became nephew etc.So that has now all been set to rights and Chris meanwhile
has more ideas I’m waiting to hear about.

The
situation in Greece
gets worse and worse. The government, having raised the price of heating oil to
such an extent that most ordinary people can no longer afford it is now banning
wood burning stoves in cities because of smog. How are people expected to keep
their houses warm and dry. Already the temperature has dropped and the rain set
in.?

Second
story – from a proud mum whose seven year old son had broken his arm and, when
asked what colour caste he would like, asked for one in pink. The smiling
doctor objected, saying pink was for a girl, to which the boy replied with
words to the effect there is no blue and no pink, no boy and no girl which
wiped the smile off the doctor’s face and the boy got his pink caste.

There have
been many instances of actors and actresses successfully entertaining as a
member of the opposite sex- drag as it is called, britches part, (female) or
female impersonation (male).

Elliot Sailors had a successful career as a female model
until she hit thirty. Facing a dramatic decrease in job offers, many models are
forced to shift gears as they age. But instead of turning to behind the scenes
fashion work or hosting shows like America’s Next Top Model, Sailors
pursued a career as a male model. To make herself appear more
conventionally masculine, she binds her chest, cuts her hair, and highlights
her jaw. She believes that transitioning to male modeling has afforded her more
time in the industry as men don’t face the same limited standards of youth:
“Men don’t need to look as young as possible, so I have a lot of time,” she
tells New York Post. Her life has changed since taking on a male
role. She and her supportive husband are often considered to be a gay couple,
and she realizes that people rarely hold doors open for her. She now prefers
dressing down and going out without make-up. Let's hope her actions encourage
others to challenge gender norms in fashion and lead to less rigid standards
for youth in female modeling.

“Male and
female created he them” and there you have it, one or the other, masculine or
feminine and nothing in between. Unfortunately for those of a religious bent
who believe this it simply isn’t true. M. or F. on a birth certificate places a
person squarely in one corner or the other but what if a person doesn’t’
exactly fit in either box?

Research in the late 20th century has led to a growing
medical consensus that diverse intersex bodies are normal—if relatively rare, 1
in 1500 or 1 in 2000 —forms of human biology. The great designer either
meant it or his screwdriver slipped along the way.

This pink and blue thing is nonsense'

Germany
has become the first country in Europe to
allow babies with the characteristics of both sexes to be registered as neither
male nor female, with the introduction of an X designation on passports to
follow. Parents are now allowed to leave the gender blank on birth certificates,
in effect creating a new category of "indeterminate sex". The move is
aimed at removing pressure on parents to make quick decisions on sex assignment
surgery for newborns.Sometimes surgery is done on the baby to turn its physical
characteristics as far as possible in one direction or the other. In one case,
a person with no clear gender-defining genitalia was subjected to surgery. The
person said many years later: "I am neither a man nor a woman. I will
remain the patchwork created by doctors, bruised and scarred. Hopefully those
days are over despite the problems intersex may cause.

Sarah Graham, an intersex woman says
there is "absolutely no visibility for intersex people in the world."
She said many intersex people were happy with their gender, but "it would
be nice... to have a box where you can choose to come out... as an intersex
person."

How many intersex persons like gays
unwilling or unable to admit their sexuality are still in the closet? But the world
in parts is changing.

Australians have had the option of selecting "x"
as their gender - meaning indeterminate, unspecified or intersex - on passport
applications since 2011. A similar option was introduced for New Zealanders in
2012.

In South Asia, Bangladesh has offered an
"other" gender category on passport applications since 2011.

Nepal
began recognising a third gender on its census forms in 2007 while Pakistan made
it an option on national identity cards in 2011.

India
added a third gender category to voter lists in 2009.

Though transgender or intersex people have long been
accepted in Thailand
and are officially recognised by the country's military, they do not have any
separate legal status. But, Germany
now apart, in our Western world they don’t even have recognition.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

The famous
nineteenth century American classical actor, Edwin Booth, noted particularly
for his Hamlet said to be the greatest ever; brother to the probably better
known John Wilkes Booth, also an actor but more notorious for his assassination
of Abraham Lincoln during a performance of Our
American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre,
would have no truck with noisy audiences. He played the major theatres both in America and Europe
and earned for himself the accolade “The prince of players.”

One story
has it that Booth was playing in Boston on a winter’s night that must have been
cold and wet and the audience were coughing; the coughing seemingly getting worse
as the evening went on until finally Booth had enough and walked offstage
leaving the audience slightly bewildered as to what was going on.

He was away
for some time during which they coughed and whispered among themselves
wondering what was happening. Eventually he returned and stood downstage centre
with one arm behind his back, making no move until you could hear the
proverbial pin drop at which point he withdrew his arm and threw a large fish
into the audience with the remark – “Get on with that you bloody barking sea
lions and we’ll get on with the play.”

In more
recent times, John Wood in ‘King Lear’ stopped the performance to politely say,
“Will you please stop coughing?”

What’s
prompted this Blog is a recent newspaper article – Noisy drummers, mobiles
ringing, people chatting and late-comers are among the reasons performers have
been compelled to take action.

The
drummers were evidently busking and Dame Helen Mirren left the theatre to
remonstrate with them. Modern audiences are expected to be quiet but this has
not always been the case. It may have started off with the Victorians who never
said they were going to “see a play,” but “going to hear a play.” With the
advent of film and particularly television we are more inclined to watch than
to listen which is why maybe modern actors don’t know how to speak but mumble
their way through performances. Sitting at home watching television one can
usually chatter to one’s heart’s content or at least pass remarks loudly and
unfortunately it would seem this behaviour has been carried over into the
theatre by many and any amount of shushing around them only makes matters
worse. Also with modern cutting in film audiences are not expected to sit
through long dialogue scenes and in consequence with many their attention span
is decidedly limited and with time seems to get shorter and shorter.

Except for
comedy when laughter is encouraged (an actor cannot hear a smile) an audience
is expected to maintain a certain decorum. Acting requires intense
concentration that can be broken say by the sudden ringing of a mobile phone.
On one occasion evidently the actor Richard Griffiths was so incensed he told
the unfortunate culprit to leave the theatre and never come back. Kevin Spacey
was more stylish snapping out “Tell them we’re busy.” Unfortunately it is not
just the ringing that is a curse in the theatre. People are so addicted to
their phones they are simply unable to leave them alone: tweeting, texting,
Googling, emailing or photographing. Put the phone away for a minute and they
start suffering withdrawal symptoms.

Variety
shows and that strange hybrid Christmas entertainment the modern pantomime are
different of course. With pantomime the audience is encouraged to make as much noise as they like joining
in the jollifications. It is probably the first experience a British child has
of the theatre and, as Arthur Askey so famously said, leaving it with the smell
of oranges and pee-pee.

Before the
curse of the mobile phone actors had
other reasons to wish an audience better behaved though possibly they were so
used to mayhem in the theatre it didn’t phase them one little bit. Elizabethan
audiences, Restoration, Georgian used the playhouse as a meeting place, to see
and be seen, to gossip, to pick up prostitutes. A favourite few were granted
the freedom of the green room backstage and the privilege of being seated on
stage and becoming almost a part of the performance. Duels were not unknown and
claques were paid to disrupt with as much noise as they could manage, and
occasionally there were riots. When in the theatre of today did we ever have a
riot?

I can join
the distinguished few who have stopped a show in order to remonstrate with an
audience. In my case I was playing George in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”
in Hamburg, a
school matinee and the auditorium packed. At the top of Act Two George has a
very long speech that requires the utmost concentration and the noise was
getting worse and worse until halfway through I stopped, turned to face them,
and came up with a little impromptu speech of my own which went something like,
“Is it too much to request that you make a little less noise please? This is not a television show, neither are
you in a movie house. We are flesh and blood up here. If you can hear us, we
can hear you. Now, if we can have a little less noise, I will start all over
again.” Which I did to a deathly silence which continued until the moment
George gets knocked down in a fight. This raised a universal spontaneous cheer
which I have to admit made me smile. They liked that and showed it with a round
of applause so we were friends again.

I believe
the noise problem in this case was more understandable because the kids were
listening to a play in a second language and if there was something they didn’t
understand they might very well have been asking their neighbour to explain. I
think they can be forgiven for that. At least none if them used their mobile
phones – that is, I don’t think so.

About Me

Ex actor, ex director, still a writer, prose now no longer plays. Like the Godfather growing tomatoes. No, too old to garden but still writing - my autobiography No Official Umbrella - same title as my Blogs and soon to come out in paperback, novels and of course my favorite detective Thornton King